What's Growing On: The joys of container gardening

Monday

Apr 2, 2018 at 2:58 PMApr 2, 2018 at 2:58 PM

The hills are filling with wildflowers, trees are leafing out and daffodils are up with their bright cups seeking the sun. Spring is here.

Last week’s sunshine and warm temperatures brought out the gardener in anyone with even a whiff of gardening DNA. The big box stores and nurseries are filling with plants for spring and beyond: flowering and evergreen shrubs for sun and shade, ornamental grasses, perennial and annual flowers, hanging baskets, vegetable seedlings. You name it, you probably can buy it and plant it right now.

But what if you want to garden and don’t have much room? I’m in that situation. Last year, I downsized from two-thirds of an acre to a condominium with a small concrete patio and an area with soil about the size of a very small bedroom — or large closet. I no longer have raised beds for vegetables, standard-sized fruit trees and long borders filled with daylilies, lilacs, roses, azaleas and the other flowers I love so much. On the other hand, I have a lot fewer weeds and a lot less work. I still want to garden and am slowly learning how to be creative in a small space.

With pots, anyone with even a few square feet can plant herbs, vegetables, fruit trees and all kinds of grasses and flowers. The key to success is to read plant labels carefully. Buy the smaller versions of plants, and water and fertilize as the label dictates.

If you want a lemon tree, for example, buy a dwarf, one that will stay 4 or 5 feet tall instead of a 15-foot standard variety. A dwarf citrus tree is easy to harvest and the shiny leaves will look pretty on your patio. Citrus in pots need excellent drainage. Put rocks or pieces of broken pots in the bottom of your lemon tree’s pot to aid drainage. Then stay on top of how moist the soil feels. My potted lemon tree started losing leaves about a week ago and I looked online to find out why. I’ve never grown a lemon tree in a pot and, as it turned out, I had a lot to learn. The pot was getting plenty of water from recent rains, but in my ignorance I was throwing more water at it, “just in case.” I now know to water the pot only when the top of the soil feels dry. I might repot the tree this spring to make sure drainage is as it should be.

For tomatoes, purchase a determinate variety, which will stay pot size. Unless you have a very large pot, you probably don’t want an indeterminate tomato. Indeterminates become very tall and rangy, which is fine in the ground where you can provide proper support but unwieldy in a pot. There are fewer determinate varieties, but they taste good. They produce all their crop at one time, a characteristic that makes them perfect for growing plum tomatoes to make sauce. Try growing a few different varieties so you get several crops at different times. I didn’t grow any tomatoes last year but plan to this spring.

Herbs such as parsley, basil, sage, thyme, mint, oregano and lemon balm are great candidates for growing in pots. They like sun and regular water. Mint and lemon balm are aggressive growers and quickly can take over space in the ground. Even if you have room to put them in the ground, mint and lemon balm might be best in a pot where you can corral their rampant growth. Rosemary is a terrific herb to have on hand for cooking, but it can get quite large. Again, look at pot labels and find a smaller variety.

When it comes to grasses, flowers and other ornamentals in pots, the sky is the limit. Mix and match to your taste and you will have a ball. Plant matching colors with all yellow, pink, red or lavender. Or combine contrasting colors like yellow and purple. The green of ornamental grasses always is a lovely backdrop in a pot of colorful flowers.

One rule of thumb for planting containers is to have “thrillers, fillers and spillers,” so the pot has something tall, something filling out the middle and something spilling over the lip of the pot. The thriller might be an ornamental grass or other upright plant. Fillers could be petunias, marigolds, impatiens or other bushy, medium-tall plants, or any combination. Spillers might be ivy, bacoba or other small hanging plant.

Despite this rule of thumb, however, there are no real rules when it comes to pots. For a formal look, plant several matching pots, each with a single evergreen shrub. Combine flowers and herbs in a single pot. Plant a lot of pots with just tall things and to heck with fillers and spillers. Your space is unique and your way to garden in it is your own. Have fun.